The only thing that stops the dust is the rain. It’s a sweet reprieve, but there is no middle ground. The land is either as dry as the Betty Ford clinic, or as wet as the ocean floor. Everything can be seen from the ridge overlooking Armadillo as John Marston gently bounces along atop...

DAILY MANIFESTO

EA to Acquire Bioware and Pandemic

I promised on Friday to shed some light on this scary purchase, but saved it for today because there was too much beer waiting to be drunk.

The web is positively frothing at the mouth with disappointment and fear. Dire predictions of Neverwinter Nights: Street, and Knights of the Old Republic: Darth Madden abound.

To be perfectly honest, I'm a bit nervous myself, having seen fantastic development studios turn to crap after being gobbled up by a larger entity.

However, there is more to this deal than meets the eye, and some if it sheds some hope.

Bioware merged with Pandemic two years ago, in order to be big enough to avoid a buyout like this. They were funded by Elevation Partners, an equity firm that is majority owned by U2 lead singer Bono.

Don't worry, it gets even stranger.

Back then, John Riccitiello was the CEO of Bioware / Pandemic. Recently, a few months ago, Riccitiello left, to become the CEO of EA.

Meanwhile, Bono was catching a bunch of shit from some paranoid damn hippies because of Mercenaries 2, and their deranged fantasies that the game was being made at the behest of the Bush administration to try and overthrow Hugo Chavez. No, really.

So now Bono, a big vocal leftist with seven summer homes and solid gold sinks, finds this embarrassing.

What good timing, because the old head of Bioware, now the head of EA is willing to take the whole thing off his hands.

Looked at this way, it almost seems like Bioware has acquired EA, not the other way around.